Firstly, let me start off by saying i’m determined to get to the bottom of this slowness issue..
I’ve contacted Dreamhost and await their reply but i’ve also seen other people have the same issue of late, so hopefully it’s their issue. Still, i hate having to deal with hosts.. i want to blog, not mess about with transferring databases and uplaoding/downloading via ftp.. as i post this, i’m backing up everything and preparing to transfer the site to a spare server i have at Lunarpages..
I may in fact leave it on Lunarpages permanently as i have a server there doing nothing anyway
Anyway, back on topic… yes i’ve got a 75% grant for college.. so my registration fee of €800 will be paid up front, plus i’ll be given a total of €2565 to cover my expenses 
So basically, i’m getting €3365 which i was never entirely sure i would get.
I predicted i’d get a 75% grant and did a little breakdown of where it will go, so i can now plan ahead in more detail and find out exactly how much i can expect to have per month. Whatever the case, i’ll now be able to go to college without needing a part-time job. So i can focus on blogging and developing my pet projects and websites.
I bet there’s loads of guys and girls out there that don’t read into the whole grant thing.. there are loads of exceptions and loopholes which you can play around with and that’s exactly what i did. Basically, i looked at the grant income limits and said ‘feck, i can’t get a grant’ – i’d earned €11k in 2006. Add that to my parents income and that pushed me way over the full grant limit of €38k. On the face of it, i could even get my registration fee paid 
(limit for that is €48k i think).
So i looked over the forms anyway and came across some exceptions and loopholes..
As i’d given up work, i told them i wouldn’t be earning from now on, thus my income would be effectively €0 (well, i do have a few bucks of online income, but lets not get complicated as that wouldn’t make a difference anyway as it’s peanuts atm, plus it’s not stable). So my 2007 income + parents 2007 income would be -€11k. Whether or not they would take that into consideration i wasn’t sure, but they did.
By choosing to stay at home, i also get the non-adjacent 75% grant which is bigger than the adjacent 75% grant, by approx €1500 i might add 
So it’s all worked out nicely in the end.. my college education should be paid for for the next 3 years by the government (unless i hit the jackpot online in the meantime, which is a remote possibility). I was never guaranteed a grant and in the worst case scenario, could have ended up paying all of that cash myself – which i don’t have. That would have forced me into a part-time job and thus i couldn’t devote my time to blogging and my college work would be under threat also..
But as always, things seem to work out ok in the end.. it’s a nice boost for me and a nice weight off my shoulders.. 
