After the farce of the Shuttle box – which never worked, and cost me far too much with fuck-all effect – I finally gave up a while back, having concluded (with the help of friends) that it was epically fucked. I’ve since written to Shuttle, and heard fuck all, and written to Micro-Direct (who I bought it from) who have responded with “Not our problem.”

Anyway, on Tuesday I ordered a new PC from Dell, of all places. Not a world-shaking bit of kit, but not bad either – 3.0Ghz dual core processor, 2Gb RAM, blah, blah, blah – and of course I can then also shove in the RAM I got for the shuttle box, plus the DVD writer, and up the score with it even more.

So I ordered it on Tuesday. And it arrived today.

Not bad service at all – of course, we still have to check it’s all a) there, and b) working. But that’s the work for tonight, and then migrating stuff over the weekend. Oh goody…

Gah, why is it that on the one occasion you really need a certain website in order to check the availability of trains before organising an interview, the fucking thing’s down, and you can’t access it at all?

Bastards.

Still, yes, I have an interview. In Cambridge. On Tuesday. Eek.

I utterly, utterly despise the Inland Revenue.

A month ago, I got the confirmation that I owed £150. In that letter, there were no details of how to pay the amount owed, and they said “We’ll be in touch to tell you how to pay it”.

Yesterday, I got a shitty “final demand” for the money. It’s the first thing that had payment information on it, and had also conveniently allowed them to add an extra tenner in interest. And of course when you ring them up to talk about it…

IR : We can’t remove the interest. You’ll need to write a letter of complaint to the department, and they might take it off.
Me : So put me through to that department, so I can sort it out.
IR : I can’t.
Me : OK, can I speak to your supervisor please.
IR : No. They’re not available.
Me : So how do I get this dealt with?
IR : You can’t. You’ll have to send a letter. Now, are you going to pay this bill?
Me : No, I want to speak to your supervisor, please.
IR : You can’t. They’re not available

Your happy smiling tax service in action. Bunch of utter, utter cunts.

In fact, in three years of hassle with them, I’ve come across precisely one helpful person. Other than that one person, the entire place seems to be staffed by officious pricks with major personality defects.

Ah, so, it was the second round then. OK, he was unlucky to be against someone like Federer so early on, but well, let’s face it, Henman’s a wet fart whoever he’s against when it comes to Wimbledon.

For whatever reason, I’m so not in the mood for being at work today. Most of it comes down to being inherently impatient – as I’ve written about before – and once I’ve made a decision, I just want to get on and do it, rather than chuffing about waiting for stuff to happen. I’m just not good at it, no matter how much practice I get.

Also, I’m spending a lot of time looking at what’s been done to the system I initially created here. And I don’t like what I see – there’s so much of it that’s now been rewritten (badly) or where the whims of Arsehole Boss are coming through, without the additional insight to know why things were the way they were, or how things work in it.

I suppose I shouldn’t get annoyed about it, but when all’s said and done – and with no false modesty – the system I wrote is bloody good. And the latest version detracts from that – it’s far buggier now, and concentration has been put into making it look pretty. Which basically means we have a very pretty application, which is also inherently buggy.

And when I stand back and look at it, I suppose that’s the case with the entire company – a pretty face for the investors and board, and a bundle of festering shite underneath.

While I don’t understand it personally, I know that a lot of people will use various famous people as their style icons – dressing like Victoria Beckham, Naomi Campbell, [latest R&B pop person], fashion guru x or designer y, high street stuff, or whatever. Fair enough. Not my thing, but who am I to dictate to others?

However, on the train today was a woman whose style “icon” appeared to be Jade Goody. Which, really, is just scary.