Posts by derfer

This nothing new by HMRC

A couple of years ago I received a letter from the tax man stating I owed him around £5,500 for previous underpayment and had three weeks to pay up. As the letter didn't give any details as to where the underpayment came from, and as I've only ever worked PAYE I was a touch confused.

I rang them up and, after 90 minutes on hold before I spoke to someone, they confirmed 'the letter was an error and shouldn't have of been sent - sorry'.

I asked for another letter confirming the first was in error and they said no.

Network related

I used to work in an office that had a huge MS access database shared by lots of people, that would invariable fall over at least once a day resulting in ten minutes of recovery by the IT peeps whilst the rest of us had a break.

When they took smoke breaks off us (as it wasn't fair to the none smokers) I found a handy correlation between database crashes and the network socket my PC was plugged into. All I had to do was 'accidentally' unplug the network lead whilst a query was running and could then have as many smoke breaks as I wanted!

The original

All this reminiscing led me to the loft to dig out my original 3c. Sadly dead now, I probably shouldn't have of left those batteries in when I put it away 15 years ago.

10 TB of total storage?

I'm sure there are fringe cases but how many people really needs 10TB of local storage on a laptop/tablet?

Not me for once...

But I've been told similar versions of this story by two unrelated people that worked for the same bank so I think it may be true:

A large new data centre for a UK bank opened mid nineties just outside the Yorkshire town the bank was named for. It had new fangled doors with swipe cards to get through, though sometimes there was a 'push to exit' button at the side of a door to get it open.

A new cleaner was working at the site one evening and walked up to one of the secure doors. Looked at both sides for a card reader but didn't see one, though there was a big red button to one side.

Pushed the button to open the door but it was still locked? Apparently they got all the systems back up and running by close of business the next day!

One of the guys that told me the above also told me about the time they tested the fire suppression system for the archived paper storage at the same banks head office (a large office building in the middle of the town the bank is named for). They had installed a new halon suppression system in the basement, and the final test was of the extract to clear the halon if someone got caught in the area being suppressed (so they didn't suffocate). To do this they fill the area with smoke then turn on the extract to see how long it would take to get all the smoke out. They did this and the smoke cleared nice and quickly.

Walking out of the building, on the way to a liquid lunch after everything had gone well, there was lots of noise and fuss outside. It turned out the basements ventilation system was linked to the modern art statue in front of the offices, and for the last 10 minutes plumes of smoke had been poring out - obviously the fire brigade had been called.

A friend of mine works for a well known soft drinks company. She had to cancel a trip to test some new production equipment this week as the site in question didn't have enough CO2 to run the plant.

I'm sure we've all had at least one oops moment!

My biggest was when I was fitting a bench in the back of a brand new van work had gotten me (we used to work out of the back of the vans).

I measured carefully and cut the worktop to size then went to put it in behind the seats, resting on the existing framework in the back of the van. It was a little tight to lay down so I just knocked it in with a spare bit of wood, I though this was perfect as if tight it wouldn't move around when driving about.

I stood back and admired my work, then walked round the side of the brand new van to see a dent all the way down one panel where I had 'helped' the bench lay flat.

I was stuck with that dent for three years until the lease ran out - my boss was OK with it but never let me forget it.

Also watch out for hidden alarms

I was working earlier this year inspecting behind wall panelling in a government building. The panels lift up and out to give access to the void behind that had various services running through it.

We got to one section of the building where all the panels had been screwed into place with a specialist security screws (all the previous panels had been unfixed and just lifted off). I spotted one panel in the middle of the area that had ordinary screws instead of security screws so undid these and lifted the panel off to look behind. There was an alarm sensor fitted to the back of the panel (apparently to all the panels in this area) and all I could see was a metal sheet with lots of warnings on it. An alarm went off and shortly after there was an armed response.

I can speculate what was behind that metal panel but I'm not going to write it down in case big brother is watching.

Needless to say I didn't remove any more panels that day.

Isn't smart compose just the same as when you are typing on your phone and it tries to guess the next word you want (then shows it at the top of the keyboard)?

Am I the only one that has tried to write whole text messages using just the proposed words at the top of the keyboard, whilst trying to retain the meaning of the message and some semblance of sentence construction?

At least they make it easy to get the stuff back

Back in he late nineties, when I worked for a high street electronics retailer, whenever we had something big stolen from the shop floor we would just wait a couple of days then go round to Cash Converters with proof the serial number belonged to us. They used to give us the stuff right back.

If you didn’t involve the police then you could put it right back on the shelf, if the police were involved then it disappeared into evidence storage somewhere for twelve months.

Don’t the telecoms company get a little bit of money for every call they connect? At around four billion a year I’d presume this isn’t chump change, so I’d guess they don’t really want it fixed.

A little like Royal Mail delivering spam through my letter box every week - it helps to keep all those Posties employed

Maybe coming back

Is it just me or does that trajectory look like it’s coming back to earth eventually?

Why the assumption that the people searching voted leave?

See title

I don't get why Chad & Ethiopia are a the bottom of this list. In both those countries you can use credit cards. Right next door in Sudan you can't use credit cards at all (something to do with it being based on American technology), and to use the ATM's you need an in-country bank account so everything is done in cash.

A little obvious

So using your phone whilst eating ruins family time.

In tomorrow's news: the Pope is Catholic.

Is there anybody out there

who would really believe an app could improve your eye sight?

Data protection

I received the letter telling me about it. In the data protection section it said something like 'we have no plans to share your information...at this time'. I opted out, but to do that I had to go to my local doctors surgery in person.

The other way

I thought truck companies optimised routes to turn left? Less time waiting for gaps in traffic to turn etc. so quicker and more economical?

TANLINE

Test at Altitude Nominal Limitations Involving Normal Equipment

Headline Incomplete

Is it just me or should the headline be finished off?

"...like a hole in the head"

Out of interest

How many self-identified as Jedi?